New Cabinet Grow - 9'x4'x18" - Complete Build Journal - Lot's of Pics

Hello All and welcome to my cabinet build! Last Friday I spent 2 hours putting this together only to have it wiped out before final submit; so here goes again. This time all pics are loaded into my albums and have all been annotated. I think this time I'll do several posts in stages rather than one big post.

Once this journal is complete, I will be moving over to the DWC room to start my actual grow.

First, the objectives of the grow which support my design:

• Semi-stealth anybody coming in the garage assumes it's a storage cabinet.
• Perpetual with a harvest every 2 - 3 weeks
• Easy to build/modify, in other words modular
• Economical...DIY on everything I can
• 100% Self Contained - by request of my wife!

Pull up a seat, pack a bowl of your favorite chill weed and let's get going.

Here's what we're going to build:

Before we can build this bad boy, we need to get the space prepared. To my wife this means:

• adding more storage
• easier to get to things
• remove the clutter

To me it means:

• Arh, Arh, Arh.....More Power!
• Complete control of design as long as I satisfy the above requirements! (at least she didn't say "No" when I asked if I can grow weed in the garage...compromise, gotta love it).

Fortunately for me, I have a 9' ceiling in the garage. Unfortunately, there is only one single light socket with CFL bulb for a light and 3 electrical outlets, 2 of which are dedicated to the sprinklers and to the garage door opener. Fortunately, they are all on 3 separate circuits; 15, 15 and 20amps. Time to rewire and add some new fluorescent light fixtures (after all I'm going to be spending more time out here).

Everything is run using 3/4" sched 40 PVC electrical conduit. I love this stuff!! To start out simple, I rewired the single socket outlet by the sprinkler timer.



I decided to run the shop lights on the same circuit as the garage door opener so I needed to run a switch-leg down and install a double-pull switch. This switch box is also a junction box for circuit #1 which will run to the grow cabinet.


Now 6' over to the right we have GFCI circuit #2 which will also run to the grow cabinet. The plug right under the left cabinet is wired to the shop lights for under cabinet fluoros's.


Everything now runs up and over to the garage door opener which is circuit #3. Here I pull the switch-leg, circuits #1 and #2, wire up the plug for the shop lights and continue running all circuits to the cabinet.



Whew we made it! 3 circuits for a total of 50 amps. This allows me to have a little redundancy in the system. The cabinet will be hard wired, meaning I'll be running the conduit into the cabinet.


By the way all the cabinets you see above were located from the North Wall to the East Wall. The North wall is the traffic pattern from the kitchen door to the garage door. I had so much crap piled in front of the work space that I could never work!! The grow cabinet will be on the South Wall.

Ok. Now that everything is cleaned up and reorganized. Let's get that cabinet built!!

Actually it starts with 3 Costco shelf units. The unit to the right is the one I built for the wife's requirement of "more storage". Building this is what gave me the idea for this plan. Unit 2 and half of unit 3 make up the grow cabinet frame.


So what happened to the 2nd half of unit 3? It turned into more storage and a workbench. Now the wife is getting really happy!!

Notice that the keyholes used to join the side rails to the uprights.


You can also use a 5/16" bolt to also "lock" in as well.


Because all the structure is in the metal frame, I could easily use 1/4" plywood to cut down on weight and cost. Here's a series of pics putting the panels up:


Here we are. Right now everything is primered. I'll put a coat of exterior white on it once it's all together.

Great job keep it up!

Thank you sir. Running out to start putting on the door frame...and maybe the doors. Hopefully pics later.

jg

Okay this part of the build had me the most concerned. The plan is to attach a wooden door frame to the steel cabinet using hose clamps with a 1/2" piece of foam sandwiched between the wood and metal to minimize light leaks. Yes we'll have some tape appearing soon.

It's really a basic butt joint frame using 1"x2"x8' furring strips ($0.84) each. Since the cabinet is 9' tall and the wood strips are only 8', I decided to build 2 frames stacked on top of each other, 6' and 3'. I won't need the top flowering chamber for awhile so I'll worry about it later.


Pre-drill (to avoid split-ends...I just hate that) and screw it together


It's together and it's actually has square corners!


The "tricky" part. "So why didn't you just drill holes into steel and bolt it together that way?" Well I thought of that too and actually bought the bolts; I really didn't want to drill through the steel. Okay the first one took about 5 minutes to get shaped ( ok more like 20). But once I had the first one done, I was like Edward Scissorhands with two needlenose pliers and whipped the other 5 out in just a few minutes.


It's installed and it's pretty dang secure!


Here's a close up of the hose clamp.


By the way, you can see some of my grow supplies are starting to arrive. I'll probably be starting the grow journal tonight along with pics of the doors.

Thank you all who have stopped by to view.

Looking very awesome man, I love ground up builds like this. I may have to resort back to the garage one day soon. before I found that ambient temps were the biggest pain in my ass. If its too hot outside, its too hot in the cab, same with cold. But there are ways around it, any ideas yet on how to combat ever changing ambient garage temps?

Oh, I also had a non insulated garage that faced west and the door had windows. SO dont let me freak you out, my situation before was not optimal haha.

KB

Hey KB welcome to the room!

You bring up a great point regarding the garage door that I hadn't considered yet! +rep

Fortunately the garage walls are insulated with a bedroom directly above but the fiberglass door is not. I'm in SoCal/OC and the sun makes the paint peel off of the front door! I'm gonna look into that rigid foam insulation if it becomes a problem!

Shortly I'll be getting into the lighting and ventilation part of the build. I've got a few tricks in regards to ventilation I'm going to experiment with.

More to come!

Doors have been added to the lower mother chamber. I used 1/2" foam adhesive for light proofing the doors. I also screwed a center piece to the left door; again for light proofing.

jsgamber said:

Okay this part of the build had me the most concerned. The plan is to attach a wooden door frame to the steel cabinet using hose clamps with a 1/2" piece of foam sandwiched between the wood and metal to minimize light leaks. Yes we'll have some tape appearing soon.

It's really a basic butt joint frame using 1"x2"x8' furring strips ($0.84) each. Since the cabinet is 9' tall and the wood strips are only 8', I decided to build 2 frames stacked on top of each other, 6' and 3'. I won't need the top flowering chamber for awhile so I'll worry about it later.

Pre-drill (to avoid split-ends...I just hate that) and screw it together

It's together and it's actually has square corners!

The "tricky" part. "So why didn't you just drill holes into steel and bolt it together that way?" Well I thought of that too and actually bought the bolts; I really didn't want to drill through the steel. Okay the first one took about 5 minutes to get shaped ( ok more like 20). But once I had the first one done, I was like Edward Scissorhands with two needlenose pliers and whipped the other 5 out in just a few minutes.

It's installed and it's pretty dang secure!

Here's a close up of the hose clamp.

By the way, you can see some of my grow supplies are starting to arrive. I'll probably be starting the grow journal tonight along with pics of the doors.

Thank you all who have stopped by to view.

Click to expand...

have no idea, a lot, that's for sure. I mainly use them between 3 and 7 volts, so it's very dependant on the speed you run them at aswell.

Parts:

• 5" hurricane lamp chimney from Michael's
• 2 x 1.5"-2" hose clamps
• 250wMH bulb
• socket
• standard wire clothes hanger

Cut the hanger just below the twist just below the hanger loop. Straighten it all out and bend around the ends so you don't keep getting poked.

After measuring everything, taking into account access for ducting front/back, bend the wire starting with the drop section where the socket will attach with hose clamps. From there it's just hold it up to the chimney and bulb and make the bends to the bulb stays centered in the tube.

Notice the two small loops where the hanger will screw to the top of the cabinet. They are bent up around 30*. As you screw the frame to the top, this bend causes the wire inside the chimney to "cinch" everything up to the top of the tube and keeps the bulb centered. With the excess length of wire at both ends, I formed 2 "springs", with a "T" bent into one side. This keeps the chimney from swaying back and forth and keeping the bulb centered in the tube.



Socket end detail:


Bulb end detail (note the "T"):

First I screwed the socket end into the top of the chamber, screwed in the bulb, slid the chimney over and screwed the bulb end into the top. Everything cinched up just like it was supposed to.

Well we couldn't just let it stand there. I pulled the light back down and hung Mylar on the top and back, rehung the light and plugged her in. Looks cool but it's actually getting warm. Now to take it back down and get the ventilation going. But this is where we stand with 250wMH lighting for Moms and vegetation:



Time for . So what do you all think? More to come!

jg

Hey JG,
not to be a negative shot in your thread here, but I think your going to have a real hard time keeping temps down on the upper shelves. I have a small veg-mom-clone cab that is stacked, and even with simple floros it was real tough to get it dialed in. If you can find a way to channel air in between the areas you might have an easier time at it. Also, I know nothing of Cali homes, but here in the midwest we almost always have a basement or a crawlspace. If you do, you will probably find that there is nice cool air hanging out a few feet below ground and if you can bring your intake through the box sill and into the lower level of your home you may help your ambient heat issues.

Good luck with your grow!

Jed

Lookin great man. Jed brings up a good point about the crawl space temps. I have one friend that grows in an attic and had to tap his AC vent to pull in cool air. I also have another friend that grows in a closet, and his intake is a hole drilled through the floor into his crawl space.

My main concern is the 250w MH for moms & veg. Not that it wouldn't work, but I think its a bit overkill. Even if you cool tube it perfectly, all that hot air has to go somewhere, which I imagine means back into your garage. After running for a week or more you will notice the temps in the garage coming up, which in turn will raise the cab temps. If you have this venting outside or into an attic then its no biggie, but most people vent back out into the garage.

As long as its pretty stealth, you could probably just make a habit of leaving through the garage every day for work, and coming back in through the garage as well. That way the door would come up a minimum of twice a day, hopefully letting any stale hot air out.

But even with hot temps and no air exchange in the garage, this will still be doable for you. Temps will be high but your plants will live, they just might not get as big as they would if temps stayed around 75-80F.

If you decide to replace the 250w MH, you can really cut a lot of heat out. Hell 100w of CFLs would keep the moms alive and clones thriving. I have 2 26w CFLs keeping 3 moms alive right now, with zero problems. Just dont get rid of the MH and put 200-250w of CFLs in there, because it would actually be hotter. CFLs have their ballasts attached, and it looks like yours is remote so 250w of CFLs would be hotter than that 250MH in your case. If it were me, I would use 3 or 4 42w 6500k CFLs. One for all my moms, one for all my clones, and 1-2 for my plants in veg. I would save the high HID wattage for the flower cab where it will be most useful.

Best of luck whatever you do, I'm subscribed so Ill check back in on ya from time to time

Peace
KB

Welcome Jed & KB,

You guys gave the perfect segue into my next area of focus. +rep to both.

The hope is to exhaust everything to the outside of the garage. The wall behind the cabinet leads to an empty space underneath the staircase so that is an option to draw from. The garage door is west facing and get's pretty hot in late afternoon. I will be installing rigid foam. Other than late afternoons, the garage stays relatively stable (hopefully).

Here are 3 drawings of an idea I will be working with. The plan is to create a passive air chamber on the back of the cabinet. This chamber will draw air in from a common vent. Inside the chamber will be painted black and will have baffles in place to keep light from moving in. The cool tubes will be closed system and won't share the air from the grow chambers (just in case I want/need to use CO2 later on).

The following drawings should give you an idea of what I'm planning. I've already got some changes in mind so this is not yet final.

This shows passive intakes, the red spots show exhaust point each with it's own fan. This also shows the detail for the cool tube.



This shows the passive air chamber. Which will be mounted on the back of the cabinet. After I drew this I realized I didn't take into account intake for the cool tubes as well as the exhaust point on the right side of the cabinet (facing front). This will be corrected.



This shows the air chamber attached to the back. Again red spots denote exhaust points. Red arrows represent ducting all of them feeding a main exhaust stack which will then be directed to the outside of the garage. Each exhaust point will have a flapper valve installed to prevent backflow of air.



Comments are certainly most welcome!!

jg

Everything looks pretty well planned to me man. i especially like the intake chamber. The only issue I see is with the initial opening for your intake. Hard to tell from the sketches, but it looks like the chamber all ties into one hole for intake. As long as the size of that hole is roughly 2x the size of all your exhaust holes, everything should be ok. Otherwise your fan will get bogged down and start to get louder. You will still keep negative pressure, but it wont be pulling as much air as it could out, which may result in higher temps and like I said, a louder fan.

But Im sure you will work any kinks out, you have already gone to great lengths just to plan it all out and put it together step by step. Just dont rush yourself. I get a good plan in mind then do the dumbest thing, germinate some seeds haha!! Once those seeds have germinated, you are on THEIR time! I have had to rush into many half-assed setups due to this, but usually things work out in the end.

Oh also, you mentioned that you hadnt accounted for cool tube intake.....wont they just intake air from the cab? They should technically be your exhaust unless you have multiple fans. You should have your cool tube pull all the air out of each cab through the intake holes. That way a constant stream of air is going through the bulb resulting in cooler temps because it doesnt allow the glass to heat up. I know most people I have seen use cool tubes just pipe them directly into their exhaust hole, but something different may work as well. Ill keep an eye out for what you decide on.

KB

KolorBlind said:

As long as the size of that hole is roughly 2x the size of all your exhaust holes, everything should be ok. Otherwise your fan will get bogged down and start to get louder. You will still keep negative pressure, but it wont be pulling as much air as it could out, which may result in higher temps and like I said, a louder fan.

Click to expand...

yes, this is a good point. you can make your intake adjustable though so you can tweak it. Assuming you are using a light trap that is. you could use a flor or ceiling register vent or just a series of holes with a piece of tin or wood that swivels on a screw.

KolorBlind said:

I get a good plan in mind then do the dumbest thing, germinate some seeds haha!! Once those seeds have germinated, you are on THEIR time!

Click to expand...

I think many of us do that on our first grow... I've got a jar full of home made hermie beans to prove I did it!!! But yeah, be patient if you can... another excellent point. Sometimes it takes a ner-full rebuild to get things right with a DIY cab.

Jed

Until you gave me the ratio I wasn't quite sure what size openings I would need. 2:1 makes it easy with a 4" hole saw.

Each grow chamber is roughly 16 cu. ft. With large lamps in a small space as well as lot's of turns and flappers, I'm thinking I should shoot towards exhausting at least 10 times the volume of the chamber each minute. I'm thinking three 80cfm 120mm case fans; 1 to run the cool tube and 2 to exhaust the cabinet.

I also have the option of pulling air from the cabinet through the cool tube. But a closed system on the cool tubes allow me to run co2 on the chance I can't keep temps down. I'm going to run some tests to see what works best.

KolorBlind said:

Everything looks pretty well planned to me man. i especially like the intake chamber. The only issue I see is with the initial opening for your intake. Hard to tell from the sketches, but it looks like the chamber all ties into one hole for intake. As long as the size of that hole is roughly 2x the size of all your exhaust holes, everything should be ok. Otherwise your fan will get bogged down and start to get louder. You will still keep negative pressure, but it wont be pulling as much air as it could out, which may result in higher temps and like I said, a louder fan.

..

Oh also, you mentioned that you hadnt accounted for cool tube intake.....wont they just intake air from the cab? They should technically be your exhaust unless you have multiple fans. You should have your cool tube pull all the air out of each cab through the intake holes. That way a constant stream of air is going through the bulb resulting in cooler temps because it doesnt allow the glass to heat up. I know most people I have seen use cool tubes just pipe them directly into their exhaust hole, but something different may work as well. Ill keep an eye out for what you decide on.

KB

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I like adjustable. I'll need to consider air velocity throughout as well. I should also consider the ability to tweak each chambers input so one doesn't take more than it's share. I will have fans inside the space to stir the air up a bit.

I'm hoping that this setup makes it easy to adjust things along the way. At least that was one of the initial objectives.

10jed said:

yes, this is a good point. you can make your intake adjustable though so you can tweak it. Assuming you are using a light trap that is. you could use a flor or ceiling register vent or just a series of holes with a piece of tin or wood that swivels on a screw.

I think many of us do that on our first grow... I've got a jar full of home made hermie beans to prove I did it!!! But yeah, be patient if you can... another excellent point. Sometimes it takes a ner-full rebuild to get things right with a DIY cab.

Jed

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